A Brief History of Bill Gross’s Picture Byline

Things were sunny in Newport Beach until September 2006. Up to that date, Bill Gross’s monthly Investment Outlooks carried a colorful photo, complete with trademark moustache:

The following month, however, the photo had turned B&W, and the moustache was gone – but otherwise it was the same photo! Ah, the magic of Photoshop.

This photo lasted just over a year, until November 2007, when a new photo appeared. There was now presumably no need for Photoshop, but it remained in B&W. Gross’s mouth is smiling, but his eyes aren’t: the new picture is like the ones Paul Ekman uses to distinguish a real (Duchenne) from a fake smile.

And now the photo has changed again. Bill seems to be back in front of those familiar horizontal stripes, but it’s hard to tell: we’re still in the world of B&W.

"Let’s get off the couch and shape up," says the new-look Gross, "physically, intellectually, and institutionally". Is this then the shaped-up Bill Gross? Maybe he should have lost the jacket, in that case. At the very least, couldn’t he have reverted back to color?